Why I Choose Vegan: Part 3

Welcome back to the final week of my series: Why I Choose Vegan. The first week I discussed Animal Rights and Factory Farming and last week I tackled the global impact of our meat consumption. Until very recently that would be it. Although I knew of other benefits of veganism, that’s all they were: benefits. In the past two years, however, I have been on such an amazing journey with my mind, body, and spirit that I now place the holistic health of a vegan diet and lifestyle near the top of my reasons for this choice.

Why I Choose Vegan: Part Three

Striving for Holistic Health

Up until recently I took my good health for granted. That veganism was the healthy choice was never much of a consideration for me in transitioning to that lifestyle. I was, in fact, making a lot of poor decisions about my health, despite my vegan diet. But then something amazing happened, something truly miraculous (and I don’t use that word lightly). I found out I was pregnant.

Being pregnant was nothing like I expected it to be. I used to think it was weakness. I believed it to be the root cause for the oppression of women for all of history. But for me pregnancy was empowering. The fact that my body was strong enough to create life still takes my breath away every single day. I began to see my body and spirit anew as I grew in respect for abilities, endurances, and compassions. This respect shifted me from the inside out and I could no longer take my health for granted. On January 23rd I discovered just how amazing my body truly was as I delivered my daughter into this world. It took a well of internal and external strength I didn’t know lived inside of me. And in that moment of pushing her out in to this world I was deeply awed by the power of the human body, and thus forever changed.

With this transition, as well as my new responsibility as a breast-feeding Mama, health became a leading reason why I have continued to choose the vegan diet. There is growing popularity and scientific discovery pointing towards a plant-based diet being the healthiest for a human body. In 2006 Dr. Colin Campbell published his 20 years research project, The China Study, which quickly became one of the most convincing health arguments for a vegan diet as well as one of America’s best selling books on nutrition. The China Study, among other influential research, writing, and film has begun a movement, altering the way mainstream Americans think about healthful eating.

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Research shows:

Factory farmed animals are fed a cocktail of artificial hormones and antibiotics that are disrupting human hormone balances and causing developmental problems, reproductive problems, and leading to the development of cancer

Heart disease and diabetes can be reversed with a plant-based diet

There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.

Carcinogenesis have been found to be turned on by animal proteins and off by plant proteins.

Besides it being instinctual that eating a whole foods, planet-based diet is the best thing for my body, an increasingly large amount of research makes it difficult to deny. And now that I understand the incredible gift of a healthy body and mind, I am dedicated to honoring this gift so that I can continue to live well for myself and my daughter.

Reader Interactions

Comments

I just stumbled across your website, and I am SOOOOOOOOO glad I did! I am vegan….VERY vegan, and incredibly proud to say that! But when I am asked the question…. “why are you vegan?” I am stumped. I always have so much I want to tell them. So much information that needs to be said, but I feel like I have 30 seconds to say it. And It always comes out a jumbled mess! ha. I enjoyed reading your Three part blog post about this. Everything you said hit home with how I felt and continue to fell! I now have a place to direct my friends and family when they ask this question! Thank you for that! 🙂

Your daughter is adorable! I never thought about pregnancy and childbirth that way. It always freaked the crap out of me haha. But that shines a whole new light on it. Thanks again for sharing, I really enjoyed this series.

Hello, Love that you have read the China Study, it truly is amazing and will hopefully bring change accross so many levels for everyone indeed. Another good book I like, is Gabriel Cousins, Conscious Eating. It’s a large book- about 900 pages. However worth every word.

Love your website and blogs. Recipes are amazing. Thank you for sharing all this and making it open for all. I too am vegan/vegetarian for 7 months now and counting. Esp More towards raw food! Loving it every step of way. Do it for my health and fighting/ preventing cancer as well as ALL the other benefits for environment, mother nature, and animals that share this planet.

Conscious Eating will open a different side with connecting to nature and its gifts. Enjoy!

Thanks for this post (I found your blog through a post Dreena Burton had on being vegan and pregnant). I was raised vegetarian, and my husband and I have been mostly vegan for the past few years. It is super inspiring for me to read about healthy vegan pregnancies, so thanks for sharing your experience with us!

Wow, you are inspiring! I have been vegetarian since birth but until this past year never thought about the abuse that cows and chickens go through to give us milk and eggs. I’ve been planning to go vegan for a few months now, and hopefully can accomplish it by the new year!

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